Pakistan’s alleged close ties to the Taliban and Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal are expected to be on the agenda when U.S. President Barack Obama hosts Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at the White House Thursday.

Obama is expected to press Sharif to revive peace talks between Kabul and Afghanistan’s former hardline Islamist rulers who have engaged in a relentless insurgency ever since being overthrown by U.S. forces in late 2001 for sheltering al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. Obama announced last week that he plans to keep 5,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond 2016, breaking his long-stated pledge to bring nearly all U.S. forces out of the country by the end of next year.

The administration has also pressured Islamabad to crack down on other radical Islamic groups such as the Haqqani network, which is based in Pakistan.

Obama will also try to convince Sharif to agree to limit the scope of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons stockpile. A new report published Thursday by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimates that Pakistan’s arsenal could expand from a current estimate of 130 warheads to 250 warheads within the next decade, making Pakistan the world’s fifth largest nuclear weapons state behind the United States, Russia, China and France.
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